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Alison is a novelist, short story writer, editor and senior academic. Her latest novel, Tenderness, was published internationally and named a ‘Book of the Year’ for The Spectator, The New York Times, The Hindustan Times, The White Review and the ABC (the Australian Broadcasting Corporation), as well as a ‘Best Paperback’ of the Year for The Sunday Times. Alison’s previous novel, Unexploded, was long-listed for the Man-Booker Prize for Fiction and The Sir Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, named one of The Observer‘s 'Books of the Year’ and serialised for BBC Radio 4. Her short stories have been widely commissioned, broadcast and anthologised. She was awarded the Society of Authors Award for Short Fiction, and her story, ‘The Heart of Denis Noble’, was shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award. Her most recent short story collection, All the Beloved Ghosts, was shortlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize for excellence in short fiction in the UK and Ireland, and was a finalist for Canada’s national Governor General’s Award for Fiction.
Alison was awarded the British Library-Hay Festival’s Writer’s Award, and has herself served as a literary judge for national and international writing awards. Alongside her publishing and academic careers, she has been a writer-in-residence, a writing mentor, a BBC contributor, a higher-education consultant, a ‘Writer for Liberty’ for Liberty UK, and a Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund.
Email: alison.macleod@aru.ac.uk
Selected Bibliography
Books
Witness 2022-2026: New Ukrainian Voices (ed. Alison MacLeod for Jantar Publishing in association with RIBA Academy, Kyiv, forthcoming 2026)
Tenderness (Bloomsbury UK/Australia/Delhi; Bloomsbury USA; Penguin Canada; Editura RAO; Waterstones Special Edition; Goldsboro Collectors’ Edition, Audibles multi-cast audiobook, 2021-23)
All the Beloved Ghosts (Bloomsbury UK/Australia/Delhi, Bloomsbury USA and Penguin Canada, 2017/18)
Unexploded (Hamish Hamilton/Penguin UK and Penguin Canada, 2013/14)
Fifteen Modern Tales of Attraction (Hamish Hamilton/Penguin UK, 2007)
The Wave Theory of Angels (Hamish Hamilton/Penguin UK and Penguin Canada, 2005/6)
The Changeling (Picador/Macmillan UK and St. Martin’s Press, USA 1996-97)
Short Stories
‘Portrait: Eric Gill Dreaming’ (Pari Perspectives, Issue 17, Pari Publishing, 2024 and BBC Radio 4 broadcast, producer Jeremy Osborne for Sweet Talk Productions, 2017)
‘Great Pucklands’ (These Our Monsters, English Heritage Publishing, ed. Katherine Davey, 2019)
‘We Are Methodists’ (Best British Short Stories 2018, ed. Nicholas Royle, Salt Publishing, 2018)
‘The Gleaning’ (broadcast, BBC Radio 4 and ‘BBC Pick of the Week’, producer Elizabeth Allard, 2018)
‘Woman with Little Pug’, ‘Chekhov’s Telescope’ and ‘The Death of Anton Chekhov by Anton Chekhov’ (author showcase broadcast: ‘Imagining Chekhov’; Sweet Talk Productions and BBC Radio 4, 2016)
‘In Praise of Radical Fish’ (producer Jeremy Osborne, Sweet Talk Productions for BBC Radio 4, 2014)
‘There Are Precious Things’ (‘Christmas Proms’ broadcast, producer Elizabeth Allard, BBC Radio 3, 2012; digital edition for ‘Thresholds’, University of Chichester)
‘Solo, A Cappella’ (producer Jeremy Osborne, Sweet Talk Productions for BBC Radio, 2012)
‘All the Beloved Ghosts’ (Short Fiction, Issue 6, eds. Anthony Caleshu and Tom Vowler, University of Plymouth Press, 2012)
‘The Heart of Denis Noble’ (Litmus: Short Stories from Modern Science, editor Ra Page, Comma Press, 2011; re-published in The Sunday Times Magazine online, editor Cathy Galvin, 2011; broadcast on BBC Radio 4 & BBC Radio’s ‘Pick of the Week’; a ‘BBC AudioGo’ audiobook; republished in The 2011 BBC National Short Story Award Collection and Best British Short Stories 2012, editor Nicholas Royle, Salt Publishing, 2012)
‘Radiant Heat’ (Prospect Magazine, 2005)
Articles and Essays
‘Literary Frenemies: the friendship of Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield’ (Collected, Royal Literary Fund, 2023)
‘D. H. Lawrence in Sussex’, ‘Why I Write’, ‘The Future of Literature’ and ‘Talisman’ (Royal Literary Fund’s digital platform, 2023)
‘The Chatterley Affair: Was Rebecca West a Double Agent in the Battle for Free Speech?’, The Telegraph, 5 Sept. 2021
The Stories We Tell (contributors include, e.g., Bernardine Evaristo, Sarah Hall, Jane Rogers, Damien Barr, Nikesh Shukla, Stephen Thompson, Jacob Ross; for Arts Council England, the National Lottery and the Arvon Foundation, 2018-21)
‘Inside Afghanistan — the first seven days of life under the Taliban’ (written in support of journalist Sayed Ahmad Sadat); ‘Escape from Afghanistan’ (written in support of journalist Sayed Ahmad Sadat); and ‘Nobel Peace Prize highlights the power of words and the dangers faced by journalists’ (Aug. – Oct. 2021)
‘On Writing: All the Beloved Ghosts’ (Mslexia Magazine, 2017)
‘On the Life and Afterlife of the Short Story’ (Writers' & Artists' Companions: Writing Short Stories, eds. Courttia Newland and Tania Hershman’; Bloomsbury UK, 2014)
‘Introduction to the Short Stories of Katherine Mansfield (Morphologies, ed. Ra Page; Comma Press, 2013)
‘Hearing Voices’ (Writing Your First Novel, ed. Karen Stevens; Palgrave Macmillan, 2013)
‘Only Write’ (Bookanista, 2013)
‘My favourite first line – by writers on the 2013 Man Booker prize longlist’ (The Observer, 2013)
‘No Excess Baggage’ (The Sunday Times Magazine, 2013)
Beautiful Blasts (Thresholds, 2011)
‘On Writing & Risk-taking’ (Short Circuit: A Guide to the Art of the Short Story, ed. Vanessa Gebbie, 2009)
‘Alison MacLeod’s Top Ten Short Stories’ (Guardian, 2007)
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